3 Slain in Punjab; 800 Arrested in New Delhi

Three people were reported killed in troubled Punjab state Sunday, while in New Delhi police arrested 800 people and clamped a curfew on about 10% of the capital’s land area to try to end communal rioting in which six people have died and 60 were injured.

Sikh extremists ended a two-day lull in Punjab, hacking a Hindu priest and a shopkeeper to death, the Press Trust of India reported.

It said a crowd chased and captured one of three Sikhs who attacked the shopkeeper in Patti town, near the Sikh holy city of Amritsar, while security forces shot and killed another. The deaths raised the toll in Punjab this month to 60.

The riots in Delhi, which started Saturday morning with clashes between Sikhs and Hindus, spread briefly Saturday night to the Muslim quarter in the central walled city area.

By mid-morning, army patrols and strict enforcement of the curfew ended the worst violence in New Delhi since Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s assassination 21 months ago.

Massacre in Punjab

The riots were set off by a massacre in Punjab on Friday of 14 bus passengers, all Hindus except one, by Sikh extremists campaigning for a separate nation.

New Delhi Police Chief Ved Marwah, who called in all available reinforcements to put down the violence, said emotions were high among the capital’s 6 million people.

Marwah ordered schools and other educational institutions closed today, when opposition political parties have called a general strike to protest the bus massacre.

During Saturday’s clashes, Sikhs armed with swords and Hindus wielding spears and hockey sticks battled each other in the western suburb of Tilak Nagar.

Dozens of shops, houses, cars, motorcycles and buses were burned or damaged in street fighting involving more than 2,000 people, including many women, over a four-square-mile area with a mixed Sikh-Hindu population.

Refugees, Sikh Widows

The suburb is a low-income area whose residents include Hindu refugees from Punjab violence and Sikh widows of some of the 2,000 victims of anti-Sikh riots that broke out after Indira Gandhi’s murder by two Sikh bodyguards.